More On: TopBuzz
Former employees say that ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok, used a news app to spread pro-China messages
Former employees of ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, say that the company put pro-China propaganda in TopBuzz, a news app that is no longer available in the United States.
BuzzFeed News says that four former employees of ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok, say that the company used its now-defunct English-language news app TopBuzz to send pro-China messages to Americans. All of the former TopBuzz employees say that the company told them to put certain pro-China messages in the app. ByteDance says that these are not true.
Three of the former workers say that TopBuzz staff would sometimes "pin" this content to the top of the app to get people to see it. One former employee remembers that staff put panda videos in the app along with videos that encouraged people to visit China. Another person remembered that a staff member had pinned a video of a western man talking about why it would be good for his new business to move to China.
The former workers say that they had to show proof to ByteDance that the content had been put in the app the way ByteDance told them to. Three of the workers said that they had to take screenshots of the live content in TopBuzz and send them back to the company.
One source said that most of the pro-China messages were "soft" and not overtly political, but added, "Let's be honest, you couldn't say no to this. Someone will go to jail if they don't do it."
ByteDance told BuzzFeed News in an email, "It is false and ridiculous to say that TopBuzz, which was shut down years ago, pushed pro-Chinese government content to the top of the app or worked to promote it. TopBuzz had more than two dozen top US and UK media publishing partners, like BuzzFeed, and when they did their due diligence, they didn't find anything to worry about.
Read more at BuzzFeed News here.
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